


Kitchen Conversations

by LowLand_Viking



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:48:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28798632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LowLand_Viking/pseuds/LowLand_Viking
Summary: Heero finally has time to sit and work on himself.
Relationships: 1xR
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	Kitchen Conversations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_black_rose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_black_rose/gifts), [Zapenstap](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Zapenstap).



> A big thank you to The_Black_Rose and Zapenstap (if I can ever find them again) for inspiring me to finally sit back down and write some Heero centric stuff.

It's not every night.

Lately, it isn't even MOST nights

But several nights a week I feel it. A child laughing, a little dog’s terrified yelp. Now in my waking mind it sounds little, it shouldn't bother someone like me. I’m stoic. I've trained since I could put one foot in front of the other, these things shouldn’t bother me. Still they haunt me.

I can hear Relena’s breathing next to me as I open my eyes and look around our moonlit room. Of course, nothing is there that would justify this ominous, soul-crushing feeling of dread in my chest. My heart is still hitting like a hammer on iron, fast and hard, an inotropic reminder that I’m still alive. They say that I'm supposed to look around the room to reassure myself that my dread is in me and not something external. Show myself that nothing is there, but my base level, monkey brain internalizes it. It would be easier if it was external, you know, something I could actually do anything about. I've never had the sitting bolt upright flashbacks or anything like you hear about from the Eve Wars guys. Mine is an iron weight around my neck, crashing through my life and weighing down my relationships.

I’m done being preyed on.

I sit up and reassure myself that no great horror is waiting to stand over me with some amorphous doom. I’ve been at war since I could lift a gun, I can handle me and mine, but this soul-crushing feeling I can’t do much with. Let it sit with me. Therapy says there aren't any “good” or “bad” feelings, they only are, but I wonder if those authors have had similar feelings at three in the morning. Relena is asleep next to me with the cat perched over her head. Her schedule has her running around at all hours, clawing for votes on different proposals, or pushing through a bill that is so far over my head that, in truth I don’t understand it. I’m glad she can get rest with all this going on. We’ve been pushing our nights later and later, she has meetings and sessions late into the night but we’ve been carving out time to just be us. Together. One of the steps to reconnecting that we’ve been working on. Love is really just intent, purposefully spending time together.

There's no way I’m getting back to sleep with this frigid hand still crushing my heart and pressing on my chest. I get out of bed and I’m hit with how cold our room has gotten. Moonlight spills in from the window and I catch myself noting the amount of lume outside and that Nods would work well tonight. A useless holdover from my active duty days, like my morning push-ups, or going shooting with Duo. I don't need them anymore but it's nice to have a touchstone to come back to while I’m failing my way through managing and coaching guys that do what used to give my life purpose.

I walk to the kitchen and pour a bourbon. Drinking got away from me early in the process, it's an easy escape. It's hard to pay attention to anything serious with your norepinephrine blocked. It takes the edge off the memories of that heat on my face. Rewatching the husk of a Leo crash into that apartment complex.

Why was that even there? Usually strip joints, payday loans, and seedy car dealerships are that close to base. Who gets an apartment right next to a flight line?

I don't remember her face.

Did I ever see it?

I don't remember the breed of dog but I damn sure remember the weight of it's burnt flaccid body in my arms. I remember being near panic trying to find something to do with it. I needed to be somewhere, somewhere that didn't profit from war. I remember trying to find somewhere soft.

Which is silly, nothing is soft in Space, everything is artificial. Living there on its own is a struggle, fighting nature itself. Spacenoids are something that evolution never took into account. We sprint break-neck into anything that technology will allow, making every grand leap of progress with glee. But humans are still just monkeys. Cruel and vengeful. Despite all our incredible space-faring feats we are still just scared, violent masses, with brains that remain barely different than when we were running down animals, or picking berries, or drinking the rot off corn mash because it makes my brain go fuzzy. 

This. This is why feelings aren't good or bad, they come, tell you what they came to say and hopefully leave. The booze only makes them stay longer and muddies their message. Just sit with them because they have things to say.

“You know Relena is in the other room panicking that you’re going to do something stupid. She hates that you can't seem to get your shit together.”

Lately my thoughts haven't always been mine, they've been the little girl. THAT little girl. Right now she's in my kitchen in her ridiculous sundress and hat even though it's snowing outside our kitchen windows in Belgium.

My own curated guide through the mistakes of my life. At first it was jarring to see her, usually a dream that woke me up with that stomach plunging, chilly hand around my heart feeling. The same feeling I got when that MS crashed into her building. I had only seen her once while she was alive. I see her too often now. She makes sitting with my feelings jarring.

“You screwed up your marriage the same way you screwed up by cutting down that shuttle as a kid, remember that? Your shit-eating grin? Pretty fucking smug there. Remember Hero?”

I winced at her mispronouncing my name. The bourbon bit my lip where it touched. The feeling was real, you can even use pain to keep you in the moment. She wasn't in the moment, she isn't even real, she is my mind wildly swinging haymakers to see what I will punch back at. Part of me blindly cutting myself in it's rage. Feelings can be real but they don't always tell the truth.

The snow made the kitchen brighter than it normally would be, softly diffusing the light across the walls and taking the glare off the windows.

“Speaking of the Noventas, how is Sylvia? Should we check up on her? Relena would get a kick out of that. It would be easy, just pull out your phone” The girl's smirk disappeared behind a teacup then under the brim of her hat. Where had she gotten tea?

When this first started, the girl was in the same white linen dress, showing herself in my low periods, I had fought. Early on, everything was a knife fight to the death. I was defensive with Relena, with work, and most of all with this bitch that I killed 20 years ago. Like the morning after a bonfire, that burned out though. I'm tired. Fighting for your life is exhausting and being constantly ready to cut tends to push the people in your life away.

When I finally took a breath and actually listened to Relena, and work, and myself; the girl in the sundress showed up to kick me in the ribs. I’m working on being grateful for the things in my life and I guess I should be grateful that I have a bitch of a hallucination to show me my fuck ups and how I’m not that great of a person.

As a child, all there was in my life was combat. I was trained and led to believe that I was bred to end lives. Then at the whopping age of 16 we brought peace to the world.

Some of us couldn't handle that shift. Wufei thought he could do it, thought he could be the bookish scholar he was before. But his new life gave him the downtime to actually process everything he had lost. He couldn't take it and ended up taking his life.

I’m not saying he made the right choice. I'm saying I understand.

“Oh! Are we lamenting Wufei? Despite all that rage, he was weak.” Her smile curdled. “He couldn't cut it” Her teacup was at her elbow now and she leaned forward on the table. Too excited at the thought of my dead comrade.

I swallowed my rage and reminded myself that she is a part of me.

Through my gritted teeth I chewed out “He had cut it his whole life. He changed history and did everything he thought was right. If he thought killing himself was the right thing to do, I still trust his judgment.”

Sitting with her and listening was one thing, she normally goes away once she's told me what she has to say, engaging with her like this only makes me vulnerable. The blue windmill on her delft teacup caught my eye as it raised in her hand.

“If it's such a right thing to do, you should get to it.” Her voice drifted off but her eyes burned into me. Her words weren't important. I knew what she was saying, suicide was always on the top of her differentials.

The idea used to pull to me, a constant companion. It tugged me deeper into myself, but since I’ve actually been talking about it and shared my plan, the whole idea doesn't fit anymore. Like wearing a shirt that's too big, swimming in the material, and feeling stupid in front of other people.

“No. It was right for Wufei but I saw what it did to Sally, how all us have to carry it now. It was right for him, but it isn’t for me.” My voice is enormous in that granite and steel kitchen. When it finally fell to the tile floor the little girl was gone and her chair was empty. My glass is empty now but my heart is full compared to when I sat down.

That little girl cannot push me around the way she did when I fought tooth and nail. Now she has some room to breathe and some light shined on her from me going out of my way and sharing with loved ones.

Now I sat at my table. Alone.

Not the cold loneliness from the Eve Wars or the comfort of a militant objective like being alone in St. Gabriel’s. This is warm, I am home, and I have a life to live.


End file.
